Page:Taras Bulba. A Tale of the Cossacks. 1916.djvu/155

Rh to give utterance to the feelings which overpowered her, was far more comprehensible to Andríi than any words. His soul suddenly grew light: all within him seemed to have been released. The emotions of his soul, which, up to that moment, some one seemed to have been restraining with a heavy curb, now felt themselves set free, at liberty, and eager to pour themselves out in a resistless torrent of words. Suddenly the beauty turned to the Tatár, and inquired anxiously:

"But my mother? You took her some?"

"She is asleep."

"And my father?"

"I carried him some, also: he said that he would come and thank the knight in person."

She took the bread, and raised it to her mouth. With inexpressible delight Andríi watched her break it with her shining fingers; and, all at once, he recalled the man, mad with hunger, who had expired before his very eyes, on swallowing a morsel of bread. He turned pale and, seizing her hand, cried: "Enough! Eat no more! you have not eaten for so long that bread will be poison to you now." And she immediately dropped her hand; she laid the bread on the plate, and gazed into his eyes like a submissive child. And if any words could express—but neither chisel, nor brush, nor all-powerful speech is capable of expressing what